For a man who talks an excessive amount about his time in the SAS reserves, David Davis has a poor track record of going in for the kill.
Thirteen years ago he threw away what seemed like an unassailable lead for the Tory crown. A second missed chance came last June when Mrs May called a general election to increase her majority and instead lost it. In the days that followed that disaster, Mr Davis stepped in to shore up the Prime Minister’s precarious position.
If he had not done so, he would have been the prime candidate to replace her.
So why now, just over a year later, has he resigned as Brexit Secretary to the leader he so recently rescued?
His resignation letter says it’s because, despite his best efforts to be collegiate (never his strong suit), he thinks the “national interest” is best served by having someone in the job who is an “enthusiastic believer” in Mrs May’s approach to leaving the EU rather than a “reluctant conscript”.
Perhaps, but this looks suspiciously like a conscript who’s trying to assassinate the general on the way out of the barracks.
For his letter does a devastating demolition job on the claims the Prime Minister makes about the Brexit approach agreed by the Cabinet at Chequers.
He is right to say that the proposed new “business-friendly customs model” is tantamount to membership of a customs union with the EU in goods.
He is right that adopting the “common rule-book” on industrial and agricultural products “hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU”.
He is right that talk of a “parliamentary lock” on those rules is ‘‘illusory rather than real” when the consequence of voting against any one individual rule would be to bring down the entire deal — and so will never happen.
But the fact that Mr Davis has exposed that the Prime Minister is trying to sell a soft Brexit as a hard Brexit doesn’t make the alternative he advocates correct.
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He wants to ditch the flexible negotiating approach and stick with the rigid red lines. We suggest sticking with the negotiating approach and ditching the red lines. Indeed, let’s get on with the necessary further “concessions” Downing Street will make by continuing free movement of EU citizens seeking work and adopting the common rule book on services as well — ie, EEA membership.
Mr Davis’s resignation means Mrs May can no longer pretend that any of this is consistent with taking back control of our laws, our borders and our money.
We will see what the other Brexiteers in government do. One, the improbable minister, Steve Baker, has already quit. Boris Johnson will run for cover — time, we suspect, for another foreign trip in search of the pangolin.
Michael Gove is playing a bigger game, showing loyalty and accepting compromise in his absolute focus on seizing the crown.
As for Mrs May? The fact that the new Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, is a minister she fired in 2016 and has since had to rehire and promote, shows how weak the Prime Minister now is.
She lost the mandate for moderation she won in her leadership election when she foolishly sided with the hard Brexiteer wing in those first months of her premiership.
She then lost the mandate for that hard Brexit when she called an election and failed to win it. Now she has lost the only claim she has left: that her mandate comes from being the only person who can hold her Cabinet together.
The Tory party needs a leadership contest so the mandate to lead can be re-established.
It’s up to Mrs May whether she wants to pre-empt that, and contest it, or wait for others to bring on the inevitable.
Mr Davis’s resignation has hastened the moment when the governing party is forced to decide whether it wants to govern or die.
He’s finally delivered a killer moment.
Onwards to Moscow!
The nation unites about one thing, though — we’re right behind the England team for Wednesday’s semi-final against Croatia.
Whether we’re lucky enough to be in Moscow with tickets or cheering on Gareth Southgate and his men on a flat screen, this is a time when football can bring us together.
Here’s hoping....
